


Knighton Vespers

by Neftzer_nettlestonenell



Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gang as Family, Gen, Rare Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 20:01:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13666287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neftzer_nettlestonenell/pseuds/Neftzer_nettlestonenell
Summary: The evening after Lambert's ledger is 'burned' by Robin, the outlaws' campfire chatter incites a near-explosion of its own.





	Knighton Vespers

"Not very bright, that, to get messed up with the Sheriff.  _And_  Gisborne."

"Come, Allan," Robin encouraged him toward a kindlier tone. "Let us not speak ill of the dead."

"Well," Allan spoke across the fire toward where Robin and Marian sat in the enfolding night. "Let us not speak too well of them, either. Pure idiocy, I tell you, a man thinkin' he might get a fair shake outta those two." The bitter in his voice was still shaded by the memory of his brother, Tom. "People what go into Nottingham's dungeon, when they come out look a lot less pretty--and often a lot less alive than they did going in." With a hearty nod he cast a glance among his fellows. "Present company excepted."

John weighed in. "How can you speak so against a man you never knew?"

"Well, John, because he was an idiot--by all standards for judging such. I can always take against an idiot. And here, Lambert's made his own case."

Marian had sat against the tree base long enough, the nook there a favorite of hers and Robin's to occupy when the campfire was blazing. Robin had now taken off to briefly walk the camp's perimeter and check on Will's turn at watch. 

"No," she told Allan. "You are wrong. He was a good man. A kind man, without bestowed nobility, but yet, with a noble heart."

Allan looked to her, surprised at her joining in the debate. She was usually rather removed from such discussions. "Do not waste your pretty tears on  _this_  mad alchemist, Lady Marian. He is done for, though we hoped to see him better off than he deserved, considering the rum choices he made."

"And what know you," she challenged him, sitting up, away from the tree, in the doing of it, "Allan-A-Dale, of such a man's choices?"

"I know what I see, which was a rube betting on a long shot, who at the last moment tried to renege, and had to cover his marker with his life."

"Then your view is incomplete, occluded by your own limitations. Lambert was a good man, a kindhearted man who, in the interest of saving the lives of miners had embarked upon devising a substance that would allow fewer men to be needed picking away, slowly dying within the mines..."

"Aye," Much interjected, oddly taking Allan's side. "Whose plan involved a major and fatal flaw: he dealt with the Sheriff." 

" _Stop_  yourself, Much," Marian cautioned him, her tone unusually sharp. "I have already been gravely disappointed by two men today," she eyed Allan. "Do not seek to add yourself to the growing list." 

"You seem to know something of him, Lady Marian," Djaq spoke out, her tone more conversational than confrontational.

"Yes. He did some work under my father's tenure as Sheriff. He designed the new sites of the communal wells in Nottingham Town. He was not yet as single-minded as he had recently become," she shared. "His wife passed away last year, with their child. Died in a fever. It was then the black powder began to consume him, his testing of it and perfecting of it dominating his life. It was then he received Guy's commission."

"And so,  _then_  that he made his fatal misstep," Allan re-contested with a shrug to say, ' _see_?'.

"If you speak so again, Allan," Marian uncharacteristically threatened, her temper on a hair-trigger, "you shall have my blade to answer to."

"Here, here, what's this?" Robin asked, returning to the area lit by the fire from his wanderings. He looked from Allan to Marian, sensing the sprung tension in the air, but unable to parse what it might be directly about. None of the gang present offered explanation.

"It is nothing," Marian announced, rescinding her challenge and removing herself from the battlefield. "I will be missed at Knighton."

"I shall see you home."

"No." It was such an abrupt word. And, she knew, to Robin an unexpected refusal. "You  _shan't_."

 

* * *

 

She had not heard of Lambert so very much, even when he  _had_  been contracted to work for her father. Had not known of his wife and child's death save by hearsay. She knew her level of sorrow on the matter of his death was disproportionate to what he, as only himself, meant to her: but one in a line of men (seemingly never-ending) that could not be saved from the Sheriff and his particular wickedness.

Yet she chose to bicker with Allan over Lambert's flawed choice of associates. Had stopped herself, only narrowly, from defending it. And had she not dismissed herself from the Forest she did not doubt her blade may well have come into play. That, or Robin's intuition would have caught her out. Hit upon the fact that her earlier tears were less for another innocent's suffering than for the knighted man who had abandoned the doing of something good that would benefit him, in place of allowing an evil to occur that would equally benefit him.

She tried to tell herself there was nothing there any longer, within those black leathers, to count on. No hope for a change-of-heart. She tried to convince herself, even, that he was playing her, using her 'hope-springs-eternal' view of his redemption against her, exploiting it to his ends. Knowing how she would warm to him when he sided with the moral right.

_Had Lambert also had that faith in him?_ Clearly (she had been there) Lambert believed himself still master of his own fate, enough to think he could back out of the bargain struck. Probably believed Guy would ransom him somehow from the Sheriff's dungeon.

And yet, still the point had come when  _he_  had not any longer believed Guy's fidelity enough to share with him the location of the ledger.

Certainly, she still believed herself mistress of her own fate enough to think she might, possibly, back out of the bargain struck with that same man. Or if not back out, enforce certain ground rules of same.

Tonight she had thought herself clear to dismiss their betrothal. Thought herself fully justified in doing so. A breach of trust. An utter failure of his heart--his conscience--to keep faith with hers.

Had she--was she--to be proven as erroneous about her own autonomy as was Lambert? It was mere hours ago Guy had turned her betrayal-fueled intent to break cleanly with him into the far less final agreement to still wear his ring, to anticipate his future, Holy troth--yet step away from the intimacy they had been on the cusp of.

_Was she to find herself as the next Lambert?  
_

_Was there to be a 'next' Lambert?_

She arrived at Knighton, pausing in the short downstairs hallway at the alcove holding stubby candles and a small depiction of Our Lady. She tried to quiet her thoughts, to focus them in prayer.

As usual, it was for Robin's life that she, repeatedly, petitioned. But it was for Gisborne's soul.

**The End**

 

**Author's Note:**

> This began as me thinking it would be Marian/Lambert for the yuku 'Unusual Pairings' Ficathon. He was meant to be revealed as one of the 'you must have had suitors' suitors. But in the writing I could not (or rather, found I preferred not) to write a pairing of them strong enough to really qualify for that. (Should anyone else be interested in doing so, please do.)


End file.
